


Out there in the pews, let them cry

by Harmonica_Smile (Rescue_Remedy)



Series: Law's Hybrid Collections [10]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Heart Pirates, Character Study, Complete, Cora is also a part of the story of course, Don't copy to another site, Family, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Law's family is not alive, Light Angst, Nurturing Law, One Shot, Platonic Relationships, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 14:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20658620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rescue_Remedy/pseuds/Harmonica_Smile
Summary: Sometime in the future, Law dandles Nami's baby, doesn't lose his temper, muses on the mating habits of Spotted Seals, and remembers.One of my favourite types of Law is nurturing Law but I wouldn't call this fluff. Hope you enjoy.*Also posted in my one-shot collection.





	Out there in the pews, let them cry

* * *

**Out there in the pews, let them cry**

* * *

They handed the baby to Law. You wouldn't think it to look at the Heart captain—his face a weary spit-full of fuck off and die, or maybe that was just around the Strawhats—but no matter how much she cried he never lost his temper.

It was life and death. Practicality. Life in his arms. Life. Cora had carried him, kidnapped him, trussed him up and bundled him, but had never hugged him. There's no way in hell Law would've allowed him then, and they just never made it to that stage of their relationship where it might have been okay. Where he might have squirmed and protested but been grudgingly happy blanketed in a coatful of feathers. He'd been thirteen. He'd stopped holding his mother's hand when he turned eight.

He didn't hug the baby now. He held her. Towel over his shoulder for the spit-up, patting her back with a cupped palm. She was too young to hug except with the lightest touch and the angle wasn't right.

Law was too big for it by the time Flevance fell, but he wished he'd let his mother embrace and kiss and even carry him more often. He'd been going to die. His mother knew it. His father knew it. His expiring sister knew it. They'd all pass away within a few years of one another. Where was the harm in letting in a little softness in the face of their promised demise?

The hugs he didn't give Lammy was on his list of regrets. By the time he'd wanted to hold his sister and not let her go—to stare down Amber Lead Syndrome—everything hurt her. She even wore a small heart-shaped cygnet ring, an amethyst in its corner, on a chain because it pinched her fingers. She'd picked it out with their mother at the jewellers, excitedly scanning the display cases. They'd gone for a milkshake and toasted ham, cheese, and tomato sandwiches after. Law wasn't with them. Forget hugging. Sometimes he couldn't even hold her hand.

She was far too light and weak, even for his stunted ten-year-old self. Lammy needed assistance to walk. He'd helped lift her into the closet, to settle her in—she and her bear. A death sentence. Gunshots a backdrop, fire centre stage. Law inhaled the soothing scent of the baby's crown, her fine hair, her face scrunched, bawling away like Nami. So angry with the world. He knew the feeling.

He lifted his palm from her back and touched his thumb to a flailing hand, and one set of fingers, in total about as big as two of his earrings, wrapped around the digit. The baby clung and waved it back and forth while demanding air fill her lungs so she could push it out at the loudest volume. He winced and felt for Nami. Not quite 130 decibels but that level wasn't out of the range of medical records or military jet take-offs.

Another set of fingers was sure to find his earrings soon.

Sanji looked on to make sure the surgeon wasn't adding to the distress of Nami-swan's bubby, but the volume decreased a little, and throughout it all Law's attention was quietly on the little one, until she pulled the finger with 'H' into her mouth and chewed, both on her own fingers and Law's skin.

She thunked her head against his shoulder. He picked up a journal he'd been skimming, though he knew the chances of reading it without a hand scrunching up pages or the baby needing more were slim.

But she settled. Out of them all. Luffy with his instant charm, Robin's cool, Zoro's no-nonsense, Usopp's caution, Franky's bells and whistles, Brook's angles and lullabies, and Chopper's cuddly fur, it was Law she quieted into, the surgeon with a cloth draped over him, just in case—one hand now cupped just under her padded buttocks, holding her to him, the other balancing his book. And she slept. For a few borrowed minutes, while Nami was trying her damndest to have a shower and maybe get some shut-eye too.

Chopper trotted across the floor and Law held a finger up to his lips, annoyance crossing his eyes as the page of his book flipped back to one he'd read about three hours ago. The tanuki stared at him with reindeer eyes, tanuki gaze—what the hell ever in the animal kingdom he was—and Law let out a sigh, put the journal to the side.

Chopper jumped up to his lap and nestled, pushing his head against Law's stomach, pulling the journal across so they could both read it. Law adjusted the baby so she lay against him a little more comfortably, using both hands to rearrange and cradle. Pulling an arm loose, he found the page number, pointing it out to Chopper, and read over the younger doctor's hat and head as his hooves held the book open. Every now and then the baby wriggled and he shooshed and jiggled her as she pushed her head into him and slept.

There had been more than one festival night and Lammy always wanted to see the fireworks through to the end. She'd fall asleep on their blanket, crowds milling about, their mother and father enjoying a beer, the sky and their faces alight. As the crowds traipsed home, their dad lifted Lammy and carried her snoozing-self—her head slack-jawed over his back.

Law was always too tired to refuse his mother's hand and he slumped into her, shoes scuffing in the dust, as they walked from the riverbed to their house a few blocks away. The sensible slacks she wore, suitable for a picnic, rubbed against his face. She'd scold that he'd trip her up, but she tucked him into bed and gave him a peck on the brow later than night. He wiped it now and Chopper wondered why.

The baby breathed up and down, a set of bellows softly teasing a fire. Chopper's fur and pulse warmed him. Largha seals give birth on haul-outs made up of ice, their mothers sometimes delaying birth until the ice was thick enough. The males that partnered with them for the gestation were generally not the fathers, but remained close—more for reasons of copulation than protection of the pup. But they set up monogamous triads (once the pup was born) across the ice, with enough distance between other trios to distinguish each as a family unit. Once the baby was weaned, the adults mated, and left when the pup had lost the fluffy white fur that kept it cosy against the Arctic cold. A new family formed for the duration of the next pregnancy and birth.

The pup learnt how to socialise. Shy around humans, the Largha seals enjoyed their own kind. The mother passed on the tactile and olfactory skills needed for hunting, fishing—surviving—all in the weeks before the pups grew strong and blubbery enough to dive. The mother and child connected with nose rubs and body warmth and calls to recognise each other on land, ice and water.

Out of breeding and into moulting season, huge groups gathered together on the ice floes. No wonder he had a sweet spot for Bepo, his fur, his proximity. Never mind the teeth.

Nami—now showered—and wreathed with the harried expression of the sleep-deprived, walked into the room. Law hoped she'd been able to grab twenty minutes of shut-eye, but there was so much to do, so little time, and what was energy but something that helped you push through the lowest ebb?

The Hearts crew had set up rosters and check-ins when Ikkaku had knocked on Law's door more than once, overwhelmed with postpartum blues. He probably wasn't the best person for the job, but he researched and tried. What was specialisation without knowledge of the general stresses and troubles that pulled rugs out from under, that frayed edges? He was sure the Strawhats had similar systems in place.

Law easily gave the baby up as Nami took her from his arms, clucking quietly, holding her in the crook of her arm. Both sets of eyes on the sleeping bundle before briefly looking at the other.

"Thanks, Law."

He lifted a hand in recognition, hardly glancing at her as Chopper turned the page. He ran a hand across his shoulder to pass the towel, taking in the warmth still pressed into his skin.

"Anytime." And she knew he meant it, understanding that Luffy's clatter, and the boys racing around the house, and Franky's shenanigans, and Zoro and Sanji's fighting, set his teeth on edge in a way the most hurricane-alert wail from her daughter didn't. Or he clenched his jaw and proceeded regardless, whereas he'd happily separate the boys from their appendages without second thought. Anything for a moment's quiet.

As a doctor, maybe he understood the intensities of distress in a way that even she had trouble with. And god knows, there were times when she really had to bite down to get through the twenty-four-seven need to be there for her daughter.

Bellemere. They'd all lost someone. If only her tough-as-nails mother could see her now as she struggled and did her best. She took the towel from Law and her hand stayed on his shoulder just a bit longer. The captain shrunk into himself a little with the removal of her daughter, as if battling an urge to grasp onto her and not let go. Who had he lost?

"Anytime, Law. I'll put her down now, but whenever she's screaming like a banshee you have permission to take her far from earshot." So long as it wasn't really, really serious. She smiled. Tired.

A house lit with dinner conversations and arguments about doing the dishes and bath-times warmed the edges of his eyes. No, he hadn't joined their crew, had never become what Luffy considered nakama, because he had his own family. Deep within the chambers of the Polar Tang, bandages were wrapped and unwrapped and applied to foolish crew members, chastisement was doled out, Mink garchu given and received, and the sweaty, stinky, noisy, squalling echoes of being alive was breathed in and savoured. Even if you had to flap the back of your ear to dislodge the ringing.

Law's nose twitched, Nami peered down, hopeful, but the medical journal was intriguing. "Let her sleep," he said without looking up, "I'll help you with the mess when she wakes." Which, true, would be about thirty minutes from now. She'd hold him to it. Who wouldn't? Nami was breastfeeding and the waste wasn't such a great irritant for a short period of time, but anyone willing to not only hold a baby, but change its nappy made her think of giving _them_ beri.

Bodily functions of living creatures created a sense of relief for Law. Those of the dead signified their passing and his own escape and worry that he'd be the next to perish. Give him screaming babies over deathly silence any day. The first could only change and grow and flower—whether into a noxious weed or a vine of sustenance was yet to be known. The second too, the dead changed, but in different ways, into different forms.

Memories, identity, experience—life extinguished, forgotten, destroyed. There were no markers to mourn the dead you'd loved when they were living. An unfortunate but common side effect of genocide and murder committed a long way from home. So he honoured the living while they breathed. Respected life, noted it, observed.

Cora, Lammy, his mother and father—their voices intermingled in a scream that would bank up his patience to the hilt if he lived with it day in day out. But the cry was joy in its own way, even as he tensed and brought awareness to the impulse to snap out shitty orders to stop the noise in the most devastating and harmful way possible. The people of Flevance should never have called out their sickness and asked for assistance. In the short-term, it was easier to crush problems than ease them. He'd lost loved ones but had never lost life.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I'm a bit obsessed with Largha (spotted) seals. I'm still working on Cuckold. These short pieces help me with the longer one. The 'fuck of and die' face was used in _Taxi_ too. Same character, wears a lot of the same expressions. Sorry.
> 
> The scene of Lammy and Law going to the fireworks was first written in a chapter of _Cuckold_. A very dark fic if you wander across, though the chapter that is in is not dark. It's only touched upon. I need to flesh that scene out (which is dark but not in a shocking way) in a oneshot at some stage.
> 
> Lord, I'm going to have to sanctify my version of Law soon, aren't I? Lol. But I don't think we really know how he would react to kids. Oda does have characters look after kids in lots of instances. I know in Punk Hazard he didn't have any attachment to the kids, but he didn't hurt them, and did save them, and I feel he was critical toward Caesar about his experiments with some of their dialogue. He was young, and Bepo a lot younger, when he met Shachi and Penguin on Swallow Island.
> 
> Anyway, it was just a thought and concept that I wanted to explore. 
> 
> Thanks for reading. All feedback is adored. I promise not to gush too much if you drop a comment.
> 
> * * *
> 
> My [tumblr.](https://chromatic-lamina.tumblr.com/)


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